Visit Shaws Flat's Historic Sites
A man by the name of Mandeville Shaw planted an orchard here on the
eastern slope of Table Mountain in November of 1849. Gold was
discovered in the area at about the same time and by early 1850 a
sizable camp had been established, which was christened Shaws Flat in
honor of the popular merchant and fruit grower.Shaws Flat became one of the most important gold camps on the
limestone belt south of Columbia. J. D. Borthwick, an English
fortune-seeker and artist who traveled the Gold Country from 1851 to
1854, prospecting and sketching illustrations, wrote of Shaws Flat in
his book, 3 Years in California: "The diggings were rich. The gold was
very coarse, and frequently found in large lumps; but how it got there
was not easy to conjecture, for the flat was on a level with Table
Mountain, and hollows intervened between it and any higher ground.
Mining here was quite a clean and easy operation. Any old gentleman
might have gone in and taken a turn at it for an hour or two before
dinner just to give him an appetite, without even wetting the soles of
his boots: indeed, he might have fancied he was only digging in his
garden, for the gold was found in the very roots of the grass, and in
most parts there was only a depth of three or four feet from the
surface to the bed-rock, which was of singular character, being
composed of masses of sandstone full of circular cavities and
presenting all manner of fantastic forms, caused apparently by the long
continued action of water in rapid motion." Rich strikes were common at
Shaws Flat; a nugget weighing twenty-six ounces was found in August of
1852. In a day and a half, one company took out more than $600, nearly
$200 of which was from one pan of dirt. The Pepper Grinder claim took
out ninety-two ounces during one week of 1855. Ten and a half pounds of
gold dust were taken out of the Collins claim in just three and a half
days.By the middle of 1851, over $100,000 had been spent on construction
of buildings in Shaws Flat and the population numbered in the
thousands. Among the businesses at this time were several boarding
houses, general merchandise stores, saloons, butcher shops, a bakery, a
printing office and a blacksmith. James D. Fair is said to have mined
here, unsuccessfully, in his early years. He later went on to become
famous as one of the Silver Kings of the Comstock Lode.An interesting tale is told of a bartender at one of the numerous
saloons in Shaws Flat who came up with an ingenious method of
supplementing his salary. The price of a drink was generally a pinch of
gold dust—with the barkeep doing the pinching from the miner’s poke—and
occasionally, some of the pinch would "accidentally" fall onto the bar.
Being a neat man, the bartender in question would sweep the dust off
the bar and onto his side of the floor. Every hour or so, he would exit
out the back door and tramp around in a patch of sticky adobe mud made
by a little spring. Returning to his station, he would then walk on any
gold which happened to be on the floor. After his shift, he would walk
carefully home, scrape the mud from his boots, and pan his trappings.
It’s said he averaged $30 a night during the week and up to $100 on the
weekends.